Gay Gender Roles Research Proposal

Gay Gender Roles Research Proposal

Research Paper Proposal

Winter 2010
I plan to study families . The temporal scope will include the time period from approximately 1980 to the present day. The paper will deal with families in America, with added detail for certain regions with larger homosexual populations (e.g. San Francisco).
Homosexuality has gained increased mainstream acceptance over the years as more people openly practice the lifestyle. This lifestyle however, is primarily geared towards younger, single individuals. The paper will attempt to shine light onto some of the obstacles encountered by the members of a family with same-sex parents. A portion will also be devoted to the children raised by heterosexual parents and the issues they deal with when first admitting to being homosexual.
The problems I am going to encounter while researching this paper are numerous. Finding credible primary sources has proven very difficult. There is a large amount of information relating to homosexuality on the Internet, but only a small minority of it deals with family issues. Since homosexuality is such a broad topic, the scope of the paper could become very wide very easily.
One of the primary sources I will be utilizing is entitled Gendered Power Relations Among Women: A Study of Household Decision Making In Black, Lesbian Stepfamilies. It is a study using qualitative and survey research methods on thirty-two black lesbians in stepfamilies to determine how gender roles and power is distributed among the members. This is a digital document found online in the EBSCOhost database. I do not know any individuals who are a part of same-sex lead families; so oral interviews will not be included in the research paper.
Weston, Kath. 1997. Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship. Columbia University Press.
Weston examines how homosexual couples view andform families. Using interviews from the members, as well as a wealth of background information dealing with the legalities and...

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